1. Pattern: Decisions disappear into committees.
This pattern occurs particularly frequently in two situations: on the one hand in organizations that are growing and whose structures cannot keep up with growth, and on the other hand in restructuring phases in which no one wants to be the first to take responsibility for a groundbreaking decision. The common denominator: uncertainty, combined with a management culture that punishes mistakes rather than recognizing them as an opportunity for improvement.
For example, I sat on a steering committee that had been meeting regularly for eight months. The agenda was always the same. Unfortunately, there was no result. Everyone nodded, everyone was informed, no one made a decision. The managing director knew. The managers knew it. And everyone had come to terms with it because the system protected everyone involved from the possible consequences of major decisions. The result: projects stagnated, employees and investors lost confidence, the company was stuck in an endless loop.
When companies increasingly shift important decisions to committees, this is not a sign of community and commitment. Rather, it indicates that responsibility is diffusing. Until no one bears it anymore. And an organization without a culture of decision-making is not capable of acting.
My recommendation:
Introduce a decision-making matrix based on the RACI principle, not as an organigram exercise, but as an informative exchange at management level:
- Who decides?
- Who is informed?
- Who has the right to object? And until when?
The results of this analysis usually show very quickly where roles are unclear, where there is a lack of competence and where managers do not have the skills they actually need to successfully fill their position. If this process is painful, that's a good sign. It reveals what everyone knew and no one has said before.
2. Pattern: The same problems, the same conversations, for years.
"We know this, we've tried this before. We've seen this before, we've already talked about it". I hear sentences like this in almost every mandate. They sound like experience. In fact, they are an absolute alarm signal. Because challenges that have been known for twelve months or longer and that no one is working on have a decision-making problem: someone at management level has decided not to decide.
Unclear responsibilities, communication breakdowns between departments, resource bottlenecks, situations that escalate again and again - when these issues come up in employee surveys, workshops and annual appraisals, it's not a sign of a difficult workforce. It is a sign of structural failure at management level. The consequence: employee frustration grows, trust in management dwindles and the best employees begin to leave internally. Long before they actually resign.
My recommendation:
Make a list of recurring issues and ask three questions for each point:
- Who is responsible?
- What was actually done?
- What was the effect?
If these questions remain unanswered, there is no need for another workshop. What is needed is a decision on what will be done differently from now on, as well as a name and a deadline by which results must be visible or the issue has been resolved.
3. Pattern: The best people leave without anyone asking why.
I experienced in one mandate that four managers left the company within a few months. All with kind words, all with a plausible story. The management spoke of normal fluctuation. What they didn't see was that the four of them all had the same reason. And they had all addressed it internally - with no response.
What these top performers had realized was simple: change was not really wanted in this organization. The management made announcements, but did not keep its promises. Decisions that seemed to have been made were reversed at the first opportunity. People with options - and top performers always have options - leave such systems at the first opportunity. They aren't being disloyal, they are protecting themselves. Because they realize quite realistically that nothing will change. They pay lip service to the idea and drive away those who were ready for change.
The consequences are more serious than most management teams want to admit: knowledge is lost, networks break away, the remaining employees watch closely how the departures are commented on. They draw their conclusions and one day draw their conclusions.
My recommendation:
Analyze the departures of the last twelve to 18 months qualitatively, not just quantitatively. Conduct exit interviews - not as an HR formality, but as a strategic tool whose results should be put on the table for management. In addition, I recommend stay interviews with the remaining top performers:
- What keeps them
- What would make them leave?
Asking these questions regularly and being honest with the answers creates a culture that makes problems visible before they escalate and in which good, loyal employees have a reason to stay. The prerequisite for this is that honest answers are really wanted. Not every manager is prepared to do this. In the end, however, this is the only way to keep good employees in the company.
4. Pattern: The informal ways have long been the real ways.
In one organization I accompanied, there was an official approval process for investments: Submit application, convene committee, take minutes, document decision. And there was the way that everyone actually used: a quick message to the right person and the matter was settled. The formal process existed on paper. In everyday life, it was irrelevant.
Formal processes, such as standardized decision-making paths, escalation rules, approval procedures, communication structures between departments or defined responsibilities for projects, are often not lived as outlined on paper. Parallel systems always develop in which things run faster and easier for those involved. If employees systematically bypass the official channels - not out of malice, but because they know that the intended process simply doesn't work - the organization has a serious legitimacy problem.
The consequences: decisions become non-transparent, errors can no longer be traced and new employees who don't know the informal codes are at a structural disadvantage. As a result, onboarding usually degenerates into a farce.
In "Reinventing Organizations visually: An illustrated guide to meaningful forms of collaboration" by Frederic Laloux, this phenomenon was depicted as a veritable web underneath the actual organizational structure. Everyone works with everyone else, but no one knows exactly what they are working on. Those who do the work in the end always find an optimization, but this rarely finds its way into the rules and regulations. Unfortunately, such an approach undermines the organization and its structure. Sooner or later, it becomes an unwelcome obstacle to any further development - no matter what strategy the company pursues.
My recommendation:
Carry out a process validation: Which formal processes do employees actually live by?
Suitable guiding questions for these discussions are:
- How does a typical decision work? Not according to the rules, but in reality.
- Where do frictional losses occur?
- What would you change immediately if you could?
Then the real question arises: Do we adapt the structure to reality or do we clarify why reality deviates from the structure?
Both are legitimate. Those who tolerate the parallel system make it the standard.
5. Pattern: Extensive reporting without sense and benefit.
I used to work in organizations that produced tens of pages of management reporting every month. Elaborately created, professionally prepared, sent out on time to a selected distribution list. And yet there was not a single meeting in which the reporting served as a basis for decision-making. The figures were commented on, sometimes discussed, but they did not trigger anything. Reporting had become a resource-destroying habit, it was not a management tool.
This is what happens when companies introduce key figures without defining the consequences in advance. Key figures without threshold values and without escalation logic are a very complex and expensive decoration.
Among the key figures that every company should really know and actively manage are - depending on the industry or department - among others:
- Turnover by performance level
- Project lead times compared to planning
- Decision speed with defined templates
- Customer satisfaction over time
- Turnover per employee or department
The decisive factor is not the completeness of the key figures. It is crucial that each figure has a clearly assigned responsibility and a defined response threshold with corresponding recommendations for action.
My recommendation:
For each key figure, ask three questions:
- What decision was made in the last three months based on this figure?
- What specifically happens if a defined threshold value is exceeded or not reached?
- Who is responsible for initiating the corresponding measures?
If these questions remain unanswered, delete the key figure or define the corresponding answers with your team. A few, relevant KPIs with clear consequences are better than complex reporting with no impact.
6. Pattern: There is agreement at the top, but nothing at the bottom.
I regularly test this in my first few weeks in a role: I ask five to ten middle managers individually, unprepared and without an agenda, about the company's three most important priorities for the next six months. The answers are rarely congruent, sometimes not even similar.
Strategies don't fail because of their conception. They fail in middle management. People who have operational responsibility, who are simultaneously supposed to drive change and who have neither the framework nor the mandate to actually lead. This is also due to the way leadership is organized in many organizations: top-down approaches communicate direction but do not provide a framework for action. Participative approaches generate desired or undesired participation - but often without clarity. What works is a combination: clear decisions at management level and transparent internal communication, combined with defined, autonomous scope for action for the middle level.
My recommendation:
Use the five-question test as a diagnostic tool, draw conclusions from the answers you receive and initiate appropriate measures, such as clear cascading with a defined framework for action, regular leadership dialogs to ensure alignment and an honest willingness to clarify what exactly should and should not be passed on. Mid-level managers do not need instructions. They need direction and clearly defined guardrails within which they can move autonomously.
7. Pattern: Transformation was delegated but not led.
This is the pattern I see most often and the one that causes the most damage. An organization decides on transformation, sets up a project team, commissions a consultancy and defines milestones. The management level is informed, represented on the steering committee and nods. But they are not behind the planned change. Not visibly, not personally, not consistently.
I recently experienced this in a medium-sized organization that had set up a comprehensive cultural programme - with an external consultant, workshops at all levels and its own budget. And while the employees talked about a new leadership culture in the workshops, the management continued to make decisions on its own, without feedback and without even beginning to respect the values that the program propagated. As a result, the program failed. Not because of the methodology, but because of a lack of credibility at the top. And the employees? They had foreseen this development from day one.
Transformation that the top management does not live and breathe loses its credibility even before the first project meeting has taken place. No change model in the world can compensate for this.
My recommendation:
Ask yourself - or your management - specifically:
- Where have we as leaders personally appeared in the last three months to explain change and directly address resistance?
- What decisions have we made that show that transformation also affects us?
If these questions are difficult to answer, the problem lies not in the project plan, but in leadership readiness. Taking the lead is the one thing that no external consultant can do on our behalf. As an interim manager, I have to state this fact clearly time and again - even if or precisely because it is uncomfortable.
Conclusion: If you wait until there is a fire, you will only put it out.
None of the seven patterns is an isolated phenomenon. In practice, these patterns often occur together and in any combination. They reinforce each other. I have yet to see an organization that has failed because of a single one of these shortcomings. It is always the interplay.
External perspectives help - not because external consultants are smarter, but because they are allowed to speak the truth that nobody wants to say internally. Managing directors who bring in external support early on are not doing so out of weakness. They bring in expert support because they understand that blind spots are inherent in the system and because they prefer to act proactively now rather than just react later.
If you recognize any of these patterns in your organization: The right time to act was yesterday. The second best is now.
